Blog: The Rise of the Rolling Release

[menotu]

by Susan Linton - Mar. 01, 2013 - ostatic

Rolling releases are not new. Gentoo was one of the first, if not the actual, that was considered a rolling release. Later rPath, then PCLOS came along and Sabayon followed. Arch joined the fray and openSUSE began Tumbleweed. But more projects are kicking around the idea these days and some have even done it.

Rolling release are those systems which are updated in smaller increments over time usually from within the system with a software management client as opposed to the more traditional installation of a new system every so often. The advantages to the user is obvious, but the developer has his reasons as well. That's why more and more projects are implementing the rolling release model, or are at least talking about it. Here are two very recent examples.

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[johnmart]

That's interesting. I always thought PCLOS was first with RR.
Guess I am a fanboy. 
Seriously the RR was one function that swung me to PCLOS. Seemed like a cutting-edge idea at the time. Still is.   
I discovered LiveCD iso's from Knoppix, but the fact that PCLOS was rolling release and used live-cd.iso's hooked me. It was like discovering an underground movement. 

[Yankee]

That's interesting. I always thought PCLOS was first with RR.
Guess I am a fanboy. 
Seriously the RR was one function that swung me to PCLOS. Seemed like a cutting-edge idea at the time. Still is.   
I discovered LiveCD iso's from Knoppix, but the fact that PCLOS was rolling release and used live-cd.iso's hooked me. It was like discovering an underground movement. 

As we run a rolling release distro, I'm sure dozens if not hundreds of
improvements have been made.   But sometimes I think we should
have a bugzilla forum to keep track of bugzilla's needed to be filed
not related to the DE's provided and running well.   Bugzilla's needing
to be filed with software providers would be the forum's only purpose.

Has anyone filed a bugzilla with Clementine, Gnumeric, Stellarium, etc.,
things like that where we would know somebody contacted the software
provider about a problem.   Sometimes they don't even know there is
some problem I think.    Nobody is on record letting them know in some
cases, by doing a bugzilla with them and so forth.

All system problems are solved in a short time but software specific problems
sometimes are not.   

So, I'm just thinking, perhaps a dedicated forum would help solving software
specific problems.    Other than broken packages where that isn't the problem.

Aren't computers fun ?

Have a good one.

Y         

[Rudge]

That's interesting. I always thought PCLOS was first with RR.
Guess I am a fanboy.  
Seriously the RR was one function that swung me to PCLOS. Seemed like a cutting-edge idea at the time. Still is.  
I discovered LiveCD iso's from Knoppix, but the fact that PCLOS was rolling release and used live-cd.iso's hooked me. It was like discovering an underground movement.  

Not the first to do it but the first to make it "easy" (in my opinion).

Previous attempts required the user to have "reasonably extensive" knowledge of the install process.

PCLinuxOS made it possible for almost any casual user to install and update a RR distro.

The "RR" nature of PCLinusOS was one of the main things that attracted me as well.

I got tired of new Chameleons every 6 months.  

  

[johnmart]

Not the first to do it but the first to make it "easy" (in my opinion).

You said it.